Description: First encounters are intense and often decisive moments both in life and literature. This study analyzes nineteenth-century French and German texts by comparing six representative scenes of first encounters and their implications. The close readings reveal how, while dealing with appearance, first encounters inevitably lead to deeper insights. The selected scenes show how the self is affected by the challenging appearance of the encountered other. Crucial psychoanalytic and epistemological issues are raised as well as new perspectives on major French and German texts.
Review Quotes: «Sima Kappeler's lively study of first encounters between fictional characters in the nineteenth century offers an illuminating analysis of the problems of representing subjectivity simultaneously from the inside and from the outside in an age of literary realism.» (Barbara E. Johnson, Harvard University)
«Sima Kappeler's book is a fascinating thematic study of the representation of lovers' first encounters in nineteenth-century French and German prose fiction. Kappeler is an excellent reader, and her work constitutes a sophisticated contribution to thematic studies as well as to the criticism of such writers as Maupassant, Grillparzer, and Flaubert.» (Werner Sollers, Henry B. and Anne M. Cabot Professor of English Literature and Professor of African-American Studies, Harvard University)